Patron saint festival In 156 days
Saint Joseph, patron of Nicotera
📅 Every year, on 19 March
Nicotera celebrates Saint Joseph on 19 March; the other patron, Our Lady of the Assumption, is celebrated on 15 August.
For centuries Nicotera believed it stood on the site of ancient Medma, and it stopped believing it because of a dig: from 1912 Paolo Orsi worked at Rosarno and showed that Medma was there. What Nicotera really is, the Romans tell us: the name comes from Nicotiria, sign of victory, and Octavian founded it in the first century before Christ after beating Sextus Pompey off this coast. Strabo recalls it as an emporium, and the Antonine Itinerary lists it as an important statio on the consular road Annia-Popilia. In the tenth century Saracen raids brought it down, and the inhabitants withdrew to the height where the town still stands today, at 212 metres above the plain of Gioia Tauro.
In 1065 Robert Guiscard fortified it, and not out of generosity: he needed a landing place for the crossing to Sicily, where the war to drive out the Arabs was being fought. The town was reborn on Norman lines, with the castle and the cathedral at its heart and the streets branching off from there towards the quarters. Then it was destroyed and rebuilt so many times that the list reads like a litany: in 1074, in 1085, after the attack of the Almoravids of Ibn-Maimun, and finally by Roger II in 1122. Its best moment came with Frederick II, who set up a yard here for the imperial fleet and brought in a Jewish community to make trade grow, housing it in a quarter called the Giudecca.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Nicotera 2
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Patron saint festival In 305 days
Our Lady of the Assumption, patron of the co-cathedral
📅 Every year, on 15 August
Nicotera celebrates Our Lady of the Assumption on 15 August, in the co-cathedral dedicated to her; the other patron, Saint Joseph, is celebrated on 19 March.
🍝 The flavours of Nicotera
Cipolla Rossa di Tropea Calabria sweet red onion, grown on the Calabrian Tyrrhenian coast
Sweet enough to go into ice cream, grown along a strip of Tyrrhenian coast: Cipolla Rossa di Tropea Calabria has held Protected Geographical Indication status since 2008.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Nicotera
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Nicotera, but an easy day trip away.
Museo storico militare Brigata Catanzaro 📍 Catanzaro · 7.8 km Catanzaro museum of the Catanzaro Brigade: arms, uniforms and relics from Napoleon to the Second World War. Chiesa di Sant'Omobono 📍 Catanzaro · 9.0 km Catanzaro church with Norman-Byzantine features, described as the oldest place of worship in the city. Basilica dell'Immacolata Concezione 📍 Catanzaro · 9.3 km Catanzaro basilica built in 1254, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, patron of the city. Chiesa del Santissimo Rosario 📍 Catanzaro · 9.5 km Fifteenth-century church in Catanzaro, consecrated in 1499, with a Baroque mother-of-pearl altar. Villa Margherita 📍 Catanzaro · 9.7 km Catanzaro's oldest public garden, of 1881, with an archaeological museum, a library and a view over the gulf. Castello normanno-svevo di Nicastro 📍 Lamezia Terme · 16 km Medieval castle on the hill of San Teodoro in Nicastro, with cylindrical towers and a pentagonal keep.